Sir, - An tAthair Brian O Caileachair of the Greek Catholic Congregation in Dublin (March 9th), writes of the suffering of Greek Catholics under Communism in Eastern Europe. The holocaust of these Catholics deserves to be better known here in Ireland.
In Romania all the Greek Catholic bishops, hundreds of priests and thousands of lay people were sent to prisons and slave labour camps, where the majority died from disease, starvation, beatings, exhaustion and exposure during the severe winters. The Greek Catholic Church was banned and all its churches handed over to the Orthodox Church, which participated in this persecution, During the first two years of their captivity the bishops were held in the monastery of Caldarusani, under the direct control of Patriarch Justinian, who kept them without adequate food and heat in an effort to force them to convert to Orthodoxy. They were also interrogated and tortured by the police.
The youngest bishop, Vasile Aftenie, was killed after weeks of torture in May 1950. After his death the bishops were moved to the notorious Sighet prison, on the Romanian-Soviet border. During the next five years three Greek Catholic bishops, one Latin-rite bishop and many priests died in Sighet.
In the mid 1960s most of Romania's religious prisoners were freed, but the last Greek Catholic bishop, Julius Hossu, was never released. Created a cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1969, he died in May 1970, aged 85. He had been a prisoner for 22 years. In April 1992 an old priest in Cluj described to me a visit he made to Cardinal Hossu in September 1969 in the monastery of Caldarusani, where he was held during his final years: "When I entered his room two Orthodox monks followed, and remained during the visit. The room was in a very bad state. There was no table and the cardinal was eating food from the floor. He was very frail and stooped, but very clear in his mind. He told me that he was proud to be able to bear his imprisonment with dignity. He said that he forgave those who had imprisoned him." - Yours, etc.,
John Donnellan, St Brigid's Park, Cornelscourt, Foxrock, Dublin 18.